


Take Me To a Place Far Away

by TheMistyCatMaster (TheMistyDarkPrincess)



Series: The ROOT of Orochimaru's Hurt AU [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anko leaves Konoha when she is young, Gen, Konoha treated Anko like crap once Orochimaru left, Not Beta Read, Possible Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 08:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15335454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMistyDarkPrincess/pseuds/TheMistyCatMaster
Summary: What if Anko didn't stay in Konoha after Orochimaru left?  What if she left to find Orochimaru for answers?  What if she goes with him instead of being a Konoha Shinobi?





	Take Me To a Place Far Away

**Author's Note:**

> Slightly self-indulgent be this fic, but I hope everyone likes it!

Rain beat heavily on the ground as Anko, cursing, made her way home.  The beating water droplets seemed to be finding all the worst places to hit her at any given moment.  She was tired, cold, and hungry, but her feet didn’t seem to move with any urgency. There was an air around her that spoke of how much she would rather not talk to anyone, and a limp to her walk that came from her overworking herself during her training.  All those things together added together to be one of the worst days in a while for her. She didn’t even have any money on her because she had somehow ended up the victim of a pickpocket. This had been the norm since she had been returned to the village, in pain and scared, alone and forgotten by a Sensei she had thought held her as dear as she held him.

There was still a blank spot in her memory of what had happened to her, a whole in a series of events that left her where she had been found.  She had no clue why she had been abandoned, literally cursed, but her mind was racing with thoughts of things that tried hard to fit into the puzzle that was her jumbled mind.  There had to be a reason right? He wouldn’t just have left her… Right? Was she just being hopeful that she was his best student? His prodigy? A rock flies from somewhere and slams into her like an unsophisticated Kunai.

“Didn’t I tell you to not walk in front of my shop you cursed child?!”

A woman voice snarled, and Anko turned her head towards her with wide eyes.

“I’m so sorry ma’am I didn’t notice!”

The girl responded, and though her voice seemed to match her face, her fear, her inner thoughts screamed back that she had no choice to walk the road she was using in order to get home.  This woman was asking the impossible. Her home was only a few more steps away from the entrance to her shop. The woman scoffed, turning and walking back into her shop, muttering rudely under her breath as she did so.  Anko was sure the word snake was somewhere in her tirade. This made Anko feel ice course through her veins, then fire. For all of her confliction… A part of her still cared for the person who had taught her so much.

She was starting to hate being in Konoha, the people starting to compare her to the man that had abandoned their village and performed treasonous actions.  She was not her Sensei… And she knew he had things he kept to himself. He always promised her, when she asked, that what he was doing was for the good of Konoha, but that he was being misunderstood at every turn.  That left her to wonder what was so misunderstood about him abandoning her. Was there a purpose she couldn't gather because of the missing information in her brain? A clue, a small insight into something the man had left hidden in her care for the reasoning?  A shudder crawled through her being, slithering like a snake up her front in a shiver and down her spine for its vanishing point. Could that be it?

She picks up her pace, feet finally feeling an urge to do so, as though her mind was unlocking a hidden command that she just didn't know existed before.  She had to get answers. Those answers could never be found here. Not in the place that was starting to treat her like a fragile child, or a cursed object that needed teachings of her place.  As she walks, the place the rock had hit her started to pulse with pain. She was done with this type of pain. She was done with not knowing. She was done playing the good girl who was abandoned.  She also knew that she wouldn’t just be allowed to leave on her own without having to do something drastic… Something the people who saw her as a traumatized child would never expect from her.

* * *

She didn’t know how to feel as she jammed the tip of the Kunai she was holding in a death grip into the surprisingly easy to scratch metal of her Konoha headband.  It felt like she was doing something wrong, her gut turning as she held the Kunai in place and stared at the symbol she had held dear her whole life. Though she had come to peace with what she was about to do mentally…  Emotionally, she felt a part of her die slightly at the thought of possibly never coming back to the place she had been raised. She couldn’t let herself fall to her emotions though. What kind of Shinobi would she be if she did that?  Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and jerked the hand that held the Kunai harshly across the symbol her headband held. Afterwards, eyes still closed, she dropped the knife and focused on moving the now marred emblem into place, tying the cloth it rested on tightly into place on her forehead.

She took in a breath, shaky and a bit unstable, but blew it out in a much more sound motion.  Calm, collected, controlled. Opening her eyes she stared forward, her eyes gazing at the area just outside the front gates of Konoha, and shifted her backpack more comfortably onto her back.  It was official, she was no longer of the village her first breath was taken in. The breath she had just taken was the sign of a new beginning, even if it was one of hardships. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, let herself feel upset about her actions.  Now was the time to move forwards, and forward her feet moved.

* * *

Seeking information on the whereabouts of her Sensei was the equivalent of sticking a Senbon in her eye.  She knows that can be painful. She’s seen Genma, a boy in her class, accidentally do that to a fellow classmate while in the academy.  It can take a person from a hundred to zero in no time. But she was getting distracted. Giving a sigh she tried to figure out where she would stop for the night, her feet protesting her continuance for the night.  She had somehow made it to the outskirts of Konoha in three, maybe four, days now. It seemed like she was on the wrong track though, and her whole being was screaming for a day of rest, to take a break and breathe, recollect her thoughts.

Taking to the trees, she climbed to a branch that was far above a safe limit for most and perched herself on it, shifting herself around on it in order to get comfortable.  She would have to change her strategy starting tomorrow. She couldn’t just continue to~ flounder without a thought of where to go from here. She had to come up with a plan and fast, hope that her Sensei could not have gotten too far away from somewhere she could find him.

* * *

By some sheer stroke of luck, her ears picked up something unexpected one day.  She had finally forced herself to discreetly cross the border between Konoha and Kusa, and she could swear, not too far from her was the sound of a familiar voice asking for something to eat from a street vendor.  After she had heard that a man fitting her Sensei's description had passed through the place from a couple of villagers, safe to ask only by her removing her headband in order to do so, she had been heading that way.  She was at least on her second day in Kusa now headed to Iwa as quickly as she could while keeping herself out of the view. To hear the voice was a slap to her face, making her feel as though her planning suddenly became invalid.  She was only one more day to Iwa, which meant that her Sensei... If the voice was truly his... Had started a trip back to Konoha, or his journey elsewhere already.

Quickly, she hid herself amongst the crowd, her eyes seeking where she heard the voice come from and pinpointed a man that seemed to look a bit out of place among the crowd.  Easily, almost like she was slithering, she inched her way towards the man, watching him to see if he had noticed (and of course he must have, because if it was her Sensei, he wasn't stupid, he would notice).  The man thanked the vendor and began to walk away then, and Anko followed, her body sliding through the crowds smoothly. The two walked for what seemed like a long time before the man froze in what seemed to be an abandoned area.  He kept his back turned to her, but she could tell he knew she was there.

“Who’s there?”

Anko tensed at the question, knowing she had been caught, but she wasn’t about to just step out of where she was hiding because the other had asked.

“I asked, who’s there.”

The man’s tone was turning a little more forceful now, and Anko gave a “tch” as she stepped out of hiding with a Kunai ready in her hand.

“Anko?”

The man asked, finally turning at the same time the girl stepped out of hiding.

“Sensei.”

She responded, voice hard.  The man’s face pinched, and the Henge he was under dropped.

“Why are you here?”

He asked, his tone a hiss, as he stared at her with an unreadable expression.

“Why?”

Anko demanded, she yanked her shirt to the side to show the curse mark she had on the juncture of her neck.

“I want to know that myself.  Why don’t I remember why I got this?  Why do I not know why you left me? Why is it that you would do this to me!”

She hissed these questions, adding poison and fury to each one.  The man narrowed his eyes at her, but he said nothing in response.

“Did you know they treat me like shit?!  They have something against you Sensei, and they’re taking it out on me!”

Anko felt tears in her eyes as she shouted this, emotions she had been fighting coming to the forefront of her being.

“I came to find out why!  I need to know why! I can’t be a Shinobi for a place that has no compassion for me!”

Her Sensei was looking away now, an expression of pain on his face that Anko had never seen before.

“Do not say such things.”

Anko snarled as those words left his mouth instead of what she thought might instead.

“I can’t go back Sensei!  I made a choice.”

Anko pulled out her headband, holding it in a tight grip before tossing it at the man.  Her Sensei caught it, eyes widening at the mark that stood out sharply over Konoha’s sign.

“Anko, what have you done?!”

Anko took a step back, her eyes wide in shock at the amount of anger that raged in her Sensei’s voice, the man looking between her and the headband within his grasp.

“I did what I needed to!  I need the answers you seem to be so damned possessed on keeping from me!”

Her Sensei let out a growl at that, and then he yanked his shirt up slightly.

“I didn’t want you to end up like me!”

He snarled, and Anko felt herself jolt at the sight of the scar that marked her sensei’s stomach.  She had never seen it before, her Sensei making sure that the two stayed in separate rooms, joined by a door in between just in case.

“That mark was not only for an experiment…  But to make you hate me Anko! I refused to let you fall into the depths I’ve been in.  A man, whom will remain unnamed, would gladly use you as he used me since you were my prodigy.  I could not let that happen to you.”

Anko continued to watch the man as he tucked his shirt back in, then pocket her headband.

“Go back to the village Anko.  Hate me. Despise me. Don’t try to remember what you were made to forget.  The villagers will only treat you badly until you prove to them otherwise. Be safe.”

The man gave her a stern look as he said this, tone that of command.  Anko felt her heart clench as she watched the man begin to shut her out once again.  She was just starting to understand (or maybe she wasn’t and she would never), she had just seen his vulnerability (and she had never seen that from him before), she knew his fear (but not where it came from).

“Sensei, I won’t.”

She said, tone full of conviction, her heart speaking for her before her brain could take the more logical route.

“Anko, you will!”

The man snapped, and the two found themselves at an impasse.  The two stared one another down with two different convictions

“Mitarashi Anko, I order you to go back to the village.”

“No!”

“Do not defy me!”

“Sensei, I want to go with you!  I want to understand where your actions came from!  I will not be turned away now!”

Her Sensei’s face seemed to fight through a series of emotions before settling on being blank.

“If you follow me, you realize that you will be fighting against everything and everyone you love?  That you will be the enemy of many, and friend of few?”

Anko narrowed her eyes as she heard her Sensei say this.

“So what?  I already told you they treat me like shit right?”

Her Sensei closed his eyes at that.

“That was not what I wished for you.”

She almost missed hearing that before he said his next words.

“This is your last chance to back out.  If you remember what I have blocked from you while with me, you may come to hate your decision.”

“Sensei…  I’ll deal with that if it comes.”

Her Sensei held out his hand then with a sigh.

“Then come with me.”

Anko didn’t hesitate to put her Kunai away and run over to him, taking his hand in her own.

* * *

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been in this forest.  I wonder if it still lives up to the name Forest of Death.”

**Author's Note:**

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